Martin Luther King Jr. and Oscar Romero: Prophets of Easter

Marty and Oscar are usually saints of Lent, which is a season of fasting, penitence, and reflection.

However, Easter is very early this year. Oscar's feast day falls just after Easter, and Marty's falls today.

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

MLK, the day before his assassination

I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.

Oscar Romero

These two were prophets of our time. Both took the side of the poor, and both were killed because of it.

What does it mean to be a prophet of Easter season? It means that God remembers that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. It means that God will make it so that nothing the prophets have sacrificed will be in vain.

Ekklesia: Why the church needs a new foreign policy

I'm not going to post the entire article. But Ekklesia has an article by Simon Barrow.

In line with other posts on this site, he argues that the church needs a new foreign policy.

Why? Basically, because the previous one is broken. Oh, and it's Easter.

Savi Hensman: The church must be on the side of the crucified

Savi Hensman, writing for Ekklesia, a liberal Christian UK think tank.


In October 2007 a priest was convicted of complicity in 7 murders, 31 cases of torture and 42 kidnappings. Christian Von Wernich had been chaplain to the Buenos Aires police force in the years of Argentina's military dictatorship from 1976-1983. For his role in the ‘dirty war’ in that period, when many opponents of the regime ‘disappeared’ and were never seen again by their loved ones, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Roman Catholic church, like many other Christian denominations and faith communities, has long made clear its opposition to human rights abuses. How, then, did a priest end up in the dock for such grave crimes? Why, when clergy have been called to account by their bishops or even the Vatican for comparatively minor matters, was action not taken at the time? And are their lessons to be learnt by people of faith?

A church of the powerful

A clue, perhaps, lies in the position of religious institutions in society. Where these are favoured by the privileged and powerful, and derive benefits from this position, they may come to identify with their wealthy patrons and supporters. Religious leaders may then find it difficult to recognise and challenge abuses, especially when victims are relatively poor and unimportant, or are portrayed as threatening social and economic systems in which faith-based institutions have thrived.

Amidst struggles between wealthy landowners and businessmen on the one hand and those seeking a better deal for peasants and workers on the other hand, communism was seen by Argentinian church leaders as a major threat. In the 1960s Cardinal Caggiano wrote that Marxism was born of the negation of Christ and his church, ‘put into practice by the Revolution’, and of the need to ‘prepare for the decisive battle’ though the enemy had not yet ‘taken up arms’. He helped to create a course in which students from the military studied a quotation from the fifteenth-century bishop of Verden: ‘When the existence of the Church is threatened, it is no longer bound by the commandments of morality. When unity is the aim, all means are justified: deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison and death. Because order serves the good of the community, and the individual has to be sacrificed for the common good.’

Just after the 1976 coup, Argentinian Archbishop Paraná Adolfo Tortolo, himself a senior military chaplain, praised Jorge Rafael Videla, who had seized power: ‘General Videla adheres to the principles and morals of Christian conduct. As a military leader he is first class, as a Catholic he is extraordinarily sincere and loyal to his faith.’ He also said that when confronting subversion, the military should take ‘hard and violent measures.’

Some in the church were actively opposed to the regime and its violence. For example in 1977 two French nuns regarded as dissidents were murdered, and Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, which protested against the ‘disappearances’, met in Santa Cruz church in Buenos Aires. But much of the religious hierarchy sided with the military.

Against this background the actions of Von Wernich, who misused his priestly function to try to obtain information from detainees, can more easily be understood though not justified. When military rule ended, the church hierarchy sought to shield him from facing the consequences, including sending him away to a parish in a small town under a false name. But finally he was tracked down and put on trial.

Witness after witness testified to the terrible suffering they had undergone during the years of dictatorship. ‘I continue to question the Church’s role as an institution, above all in the hierarchy, because it wasn’t able to meet the challenge, which is to say, it wasn’t with the crucified,’ said another priest, Rubén Capitanio, who testified against Von Wernich. ‘Von Wernich’s case is more than symbolic, because he put himself on the side of the crucifiers.’

God of life or the idols of death

In El Salvador during the years of military terror, the response of the church was different.

Though many in the church were strongly attached to the establishment and relatively uncritical of social inequalities and the repression of protest, some priests sided with the poor, working with lay people in community education and development. To the hierarchy in 1977, pious conservative Oscar Romero at first seemed a safe choice as archbishop, someone who would rein in those clergy who were too critical of the status quo.

But his deep pastoral sensitivity to the plight of the people, and distress at the murder by a death squad of a friend of his, a radical Jesuit priest, began to transform his ideas. ‘We either serve the life of Salvadorans or we are accomplices in their death,’ he reflected. ‘We either believe in a God of life or we serve the idols of death.’ Though he was saddened by the opposition of fellow-bishops and lack of support by the Vatican, he did not flinch from criticism of the regime at a time when many did not dare to speak out.

He tried in vain to persuade the US government to stop supporting the brutality of the regime in El Salvador, which, in trying to suppress dissent and rebellion, used massive violence against civilians. In March 1980, he appealed directly to the soldiers: ‘You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill”. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order.’ While celebrating holy communion that evening, he was assassinated.

A fortnight earlier, he had said, ‘I have frequently been threatened with death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death but in the resurrection.’ If he were to be killed, ‘A bishop will die, but the church of God – the people – will never die.’ And indeed neither his murder, nor the widely-publicised rape and murder of three American nuns and a layworker later that year, stopped the church in El Salvador from challenging oppressive structures and abuse of human rights.

The Jesuit-run University of Central America became a centre for study of El Salvador’s social and economic situation and concern for the traumatised and dispossessed. Psychology lecturer Ignacio Martín-Baró described the devastating impact of a conflict in which ‘The human nature of the “enemies” is denied; one rejects the possibility of any constructive interaction with them, seeing them as something one would like to destroy.’ Amidst violence, social polarization and the institutional lie, in which perceptions of reality were distorted, ‘the militarization of social life can become a militarization of the mind.’

In 1989 he, along with five other priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter were murdered by soldiers. But their influence continued. A few years later, negotiations led to an end of the civil war.

Another of the Jesuit martyrs, Juan Ramón Moreno, had earlier reflected on the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37): while the priest and Levite ‘look without solidarity, from a distance’, the ‘Samaritan’s gaze is very different – the gaze of one who is open to the situation of others’, and thus ‘he is “moved to pity.”’ He pointed out that ‘this way of acting, which Jesus presents as a model (“go and do the same”), simply reflects Jesus’ own way of acting… Before speaking or acting comes the gesture of looking, expressing a heart of mercy.’ The incarnation reflects the compassionate tenderness of God, whose ‘response to this world stretched out on the roadside, this world in the throes of a despairing death, is, as in the parable of the Samaritan, to come close to the world, to enter into the world.’

The church, Moreno suggested, must be willing to look carefully at the suffering in today’s world and show compassion, seeking the reign of God, whose love and mercy can transform. This can be challenging, especially for the privileged: ‘it is a frightfully radical change that one be decentred, abandon the viewpoint of one’s own interests and privileges, whether individual or class or nation.’

There is a price to be paid for sharing the good news in word and deed. ‘But what is important for our church and for our religious institutes: that the powerful of this world look on us approvingly and support us, or that we be a cry of hope, good news for the despised of the earth? Jesus’ words – “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” – are applicable institutionally to the church and to ourselves.’

Hope amidst turmoil

When governments are responsible for human rights abuses, how members of faith communities respond may be influenced by various factors.

How highly do we prioritise the preservation of the current order and protection of existing patterns of wealth and privilege, which may benefit us individually and institutionally? In providing pastoral care to the privileged and powerful, are we able to remain detached from their outlook and encourage them to seek a higher good? Do we tend to adopt society’s values, dismissing as unimportant the hardship and injustice endured by the poor and marginalised, or are we bearers of good news even in bleak situations?

When conflict escalates, can we resist the ‘militarization of the mind’? How willing are we to be transformed by a God of love, to look with unflinching compassion on those who suffer and seek to identify and address the causes?

And how willing are we to risk losing what we have in order to gain what is incomparably better? Even when destruction and death seem to hold sway, can we trust in the new life which is to come and be heralds of hope?

------------

(c) Savitri Hensman was born in Sri Lanka. She works in the voluntary sector in community care and equalities and is a respected and widely published writer on Christianity and social justice. An Ekklesia associate, Savi is author of the recent 'Binding the Church and constraining God' (http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/6737), 'Anglicans need deep learning not cheap victory' (http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/6478) and ‘Re-writing history’, a research paper on the row within global Anglicanism: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/research/rewriting_history
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Giles Fraser: A funny kind of Christian

His thirst for scapegoats shows how poorly George Bush understands the meaning of Easter
Giles Fraser, writing in The Guardian

Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you fucking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.

Perhaps this is how we ought to be re-telling the story of Christ's passion. For ever since the cross became a piece of jewellery, it has been drained of its power to sicken. Even before this the Romans had taken their hated instrument of torture and turned it into the logo of a new religion. Few makeovers can have been so historically significant. The very secular cross was transformed into a sort of club badge for Christians, something to be proud of.

Two weeks ago, the most powerful Christian in the world vetoed a bill that would have made it illegal for the CIA to use waterboarding on detainees. "We need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," said George Bush in a passable impersonation of Pontius Pilate. "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe."

Throughout his time in office, the president has frequently been photographed in front of the cross. Yet as his support for torture demonstrates, he has understood little of its meaning. For the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is supremely a moral story about God's identification with victims.

The French anthropologist René Girard is the modern voice that has done most to explain the nature of this moral change. Human societies, he argues, are often held together by scapegoating. From the playground to the boardroom, we pick on the weak, the weird or the different as a way of securing communal solidarity. At times of tension or division, there is nothing quite as uniting as the "discovery" of someone to blame - often someone perfectly innocent. For generations of Europeans, the Jews were cast in the role; in the same way women have been accused of being witches, homosexuals derided as unnatural, and Muslims dismissed as terrorists.

The crucifixion turns this world on its head. For it is the story of a God who deliberately takes the place of the despised and rejected so as to expose the moral degeneracy of a society that purchases its own togetherness at the cost of innocent suffering. The new society he called forth - something he dubbed the kingdom of God - was to be a society without scapegoating, without the blood of the victim. The task of all Christians is to further this kingdom, "on earth as it is in heaven".

Yet, for all his years in office, it is hard to think that President Bush has done anything much to make this kingdom more of a reality. Instead he has given us rendition, so-called specialised interrogation procedures, and the blood of many thousand innocent Iraqis. Given all this, what can it possibly mean for George Bush to call himself a Christian?

Easter is not all about going to heaven. Still less some nasty evangelical death cult where a blood sacrifice must be paid to appease an angry God. The crucifixion reveals human death-dealing at its worst. In contrast, the resurrection offers a new start, the foundation of a very different sort of community that refuses the logic of scapegoating. The kingdom is a place of shocking, almost amoral, inclusion. All are welcome, especially the rejected. At least, that's the theory. Unfortunately, very few of us Christians are any good at it.

Waiting for human rights

On Good Friday, Christians remember Jesus' torture and execution. It was conducted by an occupying power, with the collusion of powerful interest groups.

On Saturday night, many take part in the Great Vigil of Easter, where we watch and wait for Easter and the Resurrection. On Sunday, of course, we celebrate Easter.

It strikes me that with human rights, we are stuck on Saturday night.

Torture, genocide, pollution - all go on unopposed. Sometimes, our leaders even celebrate when they torture people, or conduct or help with genocide. They blame the victims. Like with drugs in America. America puts more people per capital in prison than even the most successful police states. The majority are African Americans.

You can say that the folks, regardless of race, who dealt drugs broke the law - but when you get outcomes this disproportionate, the law is either unfair or stupid. Oh, and why is crack cocaine, consumed more by Blacks in inner cities, more heavily punished than powder, when the physiological effects aren't all that different?

Even in Western countries, rising healthcare costs make it increasingly difficult for countries to help their citizens recognize the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. For mental health especially, our limited evidence base of interventions means that there is a certain part of the population for which no treatment is completely successful.

It may feel like it's night-time forever. Humans are so tragically flawed, and we will never on this earth reach our goal.

But when you think about it, Saturday night must have felt like forever for the disciples.

God gives us the grace to persist.

Whoever stands up for the rights of human beings, stands up for God.

Azucena Villaflor, disappeared on or about Dec 10, 1977: Reflection for Advent 2

Advent is about hope and expectation and waiting. The season also has strong ties with eschatology, the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and humankind. The term derives from the Greek eskhatos, meaning "last."

December 10 is also International Human Rights Day, the date on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948. It was a time when nations were determined that the horrors of WWII would never again occur. The General Assembly said that respect for human rights "is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."


From Wikipedia:

A forced disappearance occurs when an organization forces a person to vanish from public view, either by murder or by simple sequestration. The victim is first kidnapped, then illegally detained in concentration camps, often tortured, and finally executed and the corpse hidden. In Spanish and Portuguese, "disappeared people" are called desaparecidos, a term which specifically refers to the mostly South American victims of state terrorism during the 1970s and the 1980s, in particular concerning Operation Condor.

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which entered into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, "forced disappearances" qualify as a crime against humanity, which thus cannot be subject to statute of limitation.

In Argentina, the Dirty War, or Guerra Sucia, lasted form 1976 to 1983. It was not a war against an external enemy, or a civil war in the strict sense. The political history of Argentina is complicated and I do not fully understand it. But it is fairly clear that the Dirty War was a state-sponsored campaign of violence against perceived Argentinian "subversives". Here, "subversives" seems to include trade unionists, socialists, communists, and anyone perceived to be affiliated. There is evidence that because of the fear of Communism, the United States assisted or at least condoned the violent acts of the Argentine military in its own and other Latin American countries.

Estimates by human rights groups place the total casualties in the Dirty War at 30,000. A report conducted by Argentine security forces in mid 1978 and later published estimates that up to 22,000 people had been killed or disappeared by that time.

The country later reverted to civilian democratic rule, but the war criminals were able to manipulate the legal system to escape prosecution. Often, when pregnant women were abducted, they were allowed to give birth, and then they were murdered. "Subversives breed subversives," so their children were often given to military families. These things have all left a scar on the Argentine psyche.


On April 30, 1977, Azucena Villaflor and 13 other women, whose names are listed below, started marching on the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. Azucena's son Nestor, and his wife, Raquel Mangin, had been disappeared. They wore white scarves, symbolizing the dove of peace, and these became the mothers' symbol. They also wore rose buds - a white one if they knew their child was alive, a red one for those who were dead. They had asked the Ministry of the Interior, the church, the police, the military, but there was no acknowledgment that their children were even missing. And the not knowing itself was part of the terror.

The Mothers started to know each other while knocking on those doors and one evening in April of 1977, while they were waiting for a priest at the Stella Maris Church, one of them, Azucena Villaflor de Devicenti, said: "If we do this on our own, we will not get anything. Why don't we go to the Plaza de Mayo and when we become a large group, Videla (then president) will have to meet with us ... "Azucena Devicenti chose the Plaza de Mayo as the meeting place because it is located across the street from the Government House (Pink House) and for being a historical and traditional place for demonstrations.

From the Easy Buenos Aires City website.

Azucena Villaflor herself was disappeared on Dec 10, 1977, which was also International Human Rights Day. The Mothers had published a newspaper advertisement with the names of their disappeared children. She was abducted at night by soldiers. She was probably tortured, as were many of the disappeared. Her body was identified in 2005 by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, which was created to locate and identify the bodies of the disappeared. Her skeleton displayed the forensic evidence of a large impact, and she had likely been drugged, bound, and thrown out of an airplane over water, which was a common way of killing someone so that the body could not be found. These flights were known as vuelos de las muerte, or death flights.

Azucena's remains were cremated and buried at the foot of the May Pyramid on the Plaza de Mayo. The Abuelas (Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo continued the mission of the Mothers, establishing a genetic database to help identify children who had been abducted and given to military families (some were adopted internationally in good faith on the adoptive parents' parts). 56 children were located, 7 of whom died. 31 are with their biological parents, and 13 are being raised jointly (the good faith adoptions). Many of the military adoptive parents managed to escape justice.

However, when one of the first parents to be prosecuted said that the child was better off with him, because he had not harmed her and that to remove her would be far more traumatic to her, the Supreme Court of Argentina disagreed. They ruled that the murders, disappearances and abductions were now public. Paula, the child, would soon learn. And besides, she was living with the man who murdered her parents. Mary-Claire King, an American geneticist involved with the Grandmothers and in genetically testing children, details the story of the abductions, the setting up of test procedures, and the fight to prosecute.



I consider human rights to be essential to the complete development of the human race. Those leaders who fail to endorse human rights have something to hide.

However, it's very easy to advocate for human rights from behind a desk - or from a blog. Azucena Villaflor was on the front lines of human rights. She surely knew or suspected that she was placing her life in danger. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Azucena stepped out in love and faith for her son and her daughter in law. Right now, human rights are supported by a body of international law in its infancy, by uncertain national laws ... and by hope, and faith, and love.

In this Lentz icon, Mary is dressed as one of the Mothers. The Mothers would hold photographs of their children, and would wear rosebuds: white if they hoped their child was alive, red if they knew their child was dead. As the practice of disappearance spread to other Latin American countries, so did the practice of the Mothers. In this icon, Mary has no photograph of her Son, only His crown of thorns. The white hand print in the bottom left is the blanco mano, the emblem of Salvadoran death squads. Lentz' icon of Oscar Romero is similarly defaced by the presence of military helicopters.

Whenever someone is murdered, or tortured, or left in poverty, or discriminated against, God's image is defaced. But God is found in the faces of those victims of torture and disappearance, and whenever we stand up for human rights, we stand up for God. We Christians cannot stand by when human rights are violated. If Azucena Villaflor had the faith to call her murderous government to account in the Plaza del Mayo, we can have that faith also.


For Azucena Villaflor and the other Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo:

Berta Braverman

Haydée García Buelas

María Adela Gard de Antokoletz

Julia Gard, María Mercedes Gard

Cándida Gard

Delicia González

Pepa Noia

Mirta Baravalle

Kety Neuhaus

Raquel Arcushin

Sra. De Caim

Harvey Milk

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. - John 15:13 (NRSV)

From Robert Lentz:

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person to be elected to high public office in the U.S. He was not a professional politician, but ran for City Supervisor in San Francisco because he felt ordinary people were being pushed aside there by monied interests. "It takes no money to respect the individual," he said. "The people are more important than words." As supervisor he fought consistently for the rights of all of those without a voice. These people included blue-collar workers, the elderly, racial minorities, and gay men and women.

The day of his election, Harvey tape-recorded his last testament, in which he acknowledged that he would most probably die violently. The last words of that message were "You gotta give them hope."

Do you know what it's like for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to have one of their own numbered among the saints?

Harvey Milk is a martyr to the LGBT community, and Harvey Milk School in New York is named after him. He was Jewish, and I'm not aware that he was particularly religious. He's not on the Episcopal Church's calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. However, he's a saint, and I'm going to prove it.

He came to be known as the Mayor of Castro Street; the Castro is a prominent gay neighborhood in San Francisco. It didn't used to be that way, having been Scandinavian from 1910-1920, and then Irish working class from 1930-1960. In 1975, Harvey opened a camera store, and began a life as a gay activist.

"We must destroy the myths once and for all. We must continue to speak out and most importantly every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your family, you must tell your relatives, you must tell your friends, you must tell your neighbors, you must tell the people you work with, you must tell the people in the stores you shop in, and once they realize that we are indeed their children and that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do you will feel so much better."

I find it interesting, by the way, that the LGBT community in the US has co-opted the term "queer" to refer to themselves. "Queer" used to be an insult. Many older LGBT folk - and some of the younger ones - I know are still uncomfortable with it.

In contrast, gays in Asia, specifically Taiwan, Hong Kong, and parts of mainland China, co-opted the term "Tong Zhi". Tong Zhi is Mandarin for "comrade", as in Comrade so-and-so. It is a polite salutation, rather than an insult. If anyone asks to illustrate how Asians think differently from Westerners, I sometimes give this as an example.

However, there's a time and a place for everything. There's a time to fit in. There's also a time to confront.

In Harvey's time, the police, the psychologists, and the priests were the main enemies of the LGBT community. Police made sting operations and arbitrary arrests. Psychologists propagated theories of impaired sexual development. Priests called homosexuality an abomination. Harvey confronted them.

Of course, he did not personally confront them with violence. For the most part, violence against the police would have been a bad idea, although Stonewall, where gays, lesbians and crossdressers fought back against the police at a raid and taunted them. This was before Harvey's time.

Harvey instead confronted his adversaries in the public square, in politics. People said he was mad to run for public office as an "avowed homosexual." He did anyway. Eventually, he became city supervisor of San Francisco. Once there, though, he acted as a comrade as well as a confronter.

"Our cities must not be abandoned. They’re worth fighting for, not just by those who live in them, but by industry, commerce, unions, everyone. What we need is a neighborhood where people can walk to work, raise their kids, enjoy life. That simple."

His time in office was sadly short. Late in 1978, the conservative board member Dan White resigned from his post. He was a vociferous opponent of George Moscone, the liberal mayor. However, he apparently changed his mind, and asked Moscone to reinstate him. Moscone, under pressure from other liberals on the board, refused him.

On November 27, 1978, White came to City Hall and demanded to speak to Moscone. Moscone refused him. White had crawled in through a window to avoid the metal detector, because he was carrying his policeman's service revolver and ten extra rounds. He shot Moscone, and then he went to Harvey's office. He confronted Harvey angrily, and shot him five times.

That night 40,000 people, men and women, old and young, gay and straight, kept candlelight vigil outside City Hall. A recording that Harvey made was played:

"This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination.

I realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes a target or a potential target for somebody who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed themselves.

Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment or any time, I feel that it's important that some people know my thoughts.

I stood for more than just a candidate. I have never considered myself a candidate. I have always considered myself part of the movement, part of the candidacy. I wish I had to explain everything I did. Almost everything was done in the eyes of the gay movement."

He also said, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

"...Gay brothers and sisters,...You must come out. Come out...to your parents...I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives...come out to your friends...if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors...to your fellow workers...to the people who work where you eat and shop...come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene."

Many LGBT people I know have been colonized by the church in some way. To colonize a country means to come and settle among and establish political control over the indigenous people of an area. To colonize a people means to discredit their worldview and their epistemology (way of knowing things), and to establish a foreign one. Many LGBT people have been colonized by religion.

So, many of them are in the closet to themselves and/or to their religious communities. They put up with abuse to stay in the good graces of a God they think despises them for their sexual orientations or gender identities. Many have left and would rather die than return. Perhaps Harvey was one of the latter.

And yet, I believe Harvey has something to teach Christians about the Resurrection. There's no evidence that he believed in God. And yet, he was not afraid to lay down his life for his friends. He knew he was likely going to be killed at some point - he premeditated his tape recording, just as Dan White arguably premeditated his murder. He went willingly. He was not a Christian, and yet his actions were those of one who believes in the Resurrection. As a universalist Christian, I believe that the Resurrection is for all people, everywhere.

Whether Harvey knew it or not, he was serving Jesus Christ, foreshadowing Christ's actions. Harvey was paving the way for LGBT people to come out in political life. Lentz' icon shows Harvey Milk as a servant of God, paving the way for LGBT people to come out in religious life.

But through Harvey, Jesus is decolonizing the LGBT community. To decolonize a country means to withdraw from a colony, leaving it independent. To decolonize a people means to cease to poison their hearts and minds and souls against themselves. Jesus doesn't set us free from homosexuality. Jesus sets LGBT people and the church free from homophobia and transphobia. Jesus decolonizes, and sometimes he uses servants who do not know Him to do so.

Easter!

Christ Enthroned, by Robert Lentz

"This icon depicts the Christ in eschatological glory. The blue spheres around him, without beginning or end, represent eternity, and the red squares represent time. The Greek letters in his halo signify “I am who I am,” God and human. Christ bridges time and eternity.

The Old Testament prophets had fantastic visions of God in glory, and their imagery was repeated in the New Testament. Six-winged seraphim surround Christ’s throne, and Ezechial’s winged beasts emerge from the four directions, now representing the four evangelists. All except for Christ are painted as though transparent, to emphasize that they are spirits. Christ is painted with bold colors, because he is human. Material creation is enthroned in the highest heavens. This is the core of our faith as Christians.

Misguided emphasis has sometimes led Christians to spurn the material world. This world of ours is called to inconceivable glory, however -- both because it was created by God, but also because it was assumed into God’s very person. Because of Christ, there is no thing nor any person in this world that does not command our respect. As St. Gregory of Nyssa said many centuries ago, if only we would take off our shoes -- referring to the story of Moses and the burning bush -- we would discover that all ground was sacred."

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
Isaiah 65:17

I've already said that I was agnostic on the traditional take on the Resurrection: that Christ died, and literally was resurrected on the third day. I simply don't think we can know with absolute certainty. The Resurrection also gets us into the question of why Jesus had to die for us. Was He sacrificed because God is angry at us, and would only be placated by a blood sacrifice? I don't find this theology, penal substitution, consistent with the way I read the Bible and with my experience. However, many Christians are practically married to it. Canon Jeffrey John, Dean of St. Alban's in the UK, stated publicly that he didn't believe in penal substitution, and two Evangelical bishops were willing to attack him without even reading the full transcript of what he said.

Obviously, Resurrection and atonement are much too hard to deal with, so I'm going skip right to the Eschaton. The Eschaton (noun) is the final event in the divine plan, the end of the world. It derives from the Greek, eskhaton, neuter of eskhatos, meaning last. Some conservative Evangelicals have read the Bible and determined that Christ will come, riding on the clouds, amidst the sound of trumpets. We'll be raptured, and meet him in the air. There's debate about the specific timings of the tribulation, and the thousand-year reign of Christ, or millenium. This diagram explains it all.



...personally, I think it all looks a bit superstitious.

In my reflection for MLK, I quoted James Cone, who said that African-Americans couldn't find justice in this life, and so looked forward to the Second Coming to find it. In so doing they refused to let injustice have the last word. They trusted God. Mainline Protestants in America may have lost sight of that trust. We're generally middle-class Whites. We can insulate ourselves from the sufferings of the world, if we wish. There's a trait in social psychology called belief in a just world. It's divided into belief in immanent justice, and belief in ultimate justice. The former means believing that the world is just in its present state. It is associated with such actions as blaming the poor for their own plight. In other words, it is willful ignorance. For example, just by being American and breathing, we participate in an economic system that exploits the poor, especially those in the Global South. Think clothing, coffee, and chocolate. As the bumper sticker says, if you aren't outraged, you haven't been paying attention. However, walking around in a permanent state of outrage isn't too good for your mental health.

Belief in ultimate justice, then, is what really gets us through the day. It worked for African-Americans. It worked for the Latin Americans involved in liberation theology. It works for me. Although I'm a skeptic, I know that, through Christ, God has defeated sin and death. The Resurrection sustains us until we get to the Last Judgment. It continues to sustain us, because it's not an event that happened just once in history. The Resurrection is now, and always. It is Oscar Romero saying, "If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people." It is Joan of Arc saying, "Hold the cross high, so that I may see it through the flames!" It is Harvey Milk saying, in the tape he recorded in the event of his assasination, that you "gotta give them hope."

Christian martyrs over the years have trusted that one Resurrection isn't the end of the story, that God will accept their sacrifices of justice, mercy and humility (Micah 6:8), and that God will return to set things straight. There's no evidence that Harvey Milk was particularly religious, but it seems he did the same. He probably didn't call it the Resurrection, but he seems to have trusted in it anyway.

Jesus said that he did not know the appointed time of the Last Judgment. It is not for human beings to know or to worry about. It's all set, it's all planned out. All we have to do, then, is to strive to bring about God's reign here on earth. As Micah says (NRSV), "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Do this, and trust Jesus that, on the Day of Judgment ...

Luke 24:1-12

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.


... all the tombs will be empty.